The Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) has always been one of my favorite night sky objects.

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The Pleiades project has been in development for the best part of a decade.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

"These devices allow Pleiades to slew very fast from a point A to a point B, " she told me.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

Expect Pleiades pictures to become a common feature in newspapers and on websites like this one in the years ahead.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

"Pleiades is equipped with control moment gyros, " explained Charlotte Gabriel Robez, the Pleiades project manager with Astrium Geo-information Services.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

Just days after its launch on a Soyuz rocket, the new French high-resolution Pleiades imaging satellite has sent down its first pictures.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

Pleiades will go head-to-head with the Americans and has a number of clever tricks that should enable it to win a sizeable market share.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

So whereas the nominal maximum width in an image is 20km, Pleiades can scan the ground rapidly to effectively build up a much wider swath at any given point.

BBC: Sharp-eyed Pleiades returns first pictures

This 1, 000-kilogram spacecraft will be similar to the two French Pleiades satellites now in orbit, with a 70-centimeter ground resolution in black and white and 2.8 meters in color.

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